006 STAR TREK: Mudd the Immortal!
by Dan Bivens
Summary: Talk about bad pennies showing up: an enormous ship of some 7,000 androids invades Earth's space and a subspace call goes out for the USS ENTERPRISE to offer swift assistance! But are Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, etc. ready for an immortal Harcourt Fenton Mudd
1. Chapter 1

**STAR TREK:**

**Mudd the Immortal!**

Chapter 1

Permanently orbiting above the San Francisco site for Starfleet Headquarters was Earth's massive mushroom-shaped duranium-sheathed spacedock. For those stationed therein upon its command-and-control Deck One, things were about to turn toward the extreme...and not one they would welcome.

"Short-range sensors are picking up an incoming craft of unknown origin, Commander Brehk," worredly reported a dark-haired Human in his mid-twenties, wearing the traditional tan tunic often affiliated with command-level operations. His sleeve braids that of...

"Clarify, Lt. Asher," said the grandiloquently dual-toned, multi-octave voice of Commander Brehk, a more recent race addition to the Federation and Starfleet. His distinctly snake-like eyes seemingly lost upon an angelically arranged face atop a body both thick and tall. His hair short-yet-serous with a wondrously golden color far more magnificent than the blondest of blond heads within the Human multitudes in service to Starfleet. A gold-green tunic whose sleeve braids were the double-solid expected of such a command-level classification. "How does its structural symmetry compare with the catalog of Federation-approved vessels?"

After allowing his library computers to rapidly ran the numbers of comparably-lined non-Starfleet ships from near and far within the burgeoning borders of the United Federation of Planets, Lt. Asher shook his smooth-faced head. "Computers have nothing like it on file, Commander. It's being auto-classified as 'completely unknown', sir."

Coming from a race of humanoids whom adhered to rules and regulations more than any other, save, possibly, the warlike Andorians...

"Communications, try to make contact," ordered Brehk of a beautiful Vulcan wearing the typical tunic-dress of red. Then, to Lt. Asher, who was still scanning the vessel swooping in at sublight speeds scarily close to that of light, "Give me a full report, please, Mr. Asher."

"Aye, aye, Commander," quickly came the proper reply, followed by a much more detailed description of the strange ship that had basically appeared in said short-rage sensor scans scant minutes earlier. "It has warp engines as well as impulse, which it is now using at a space-normal speed that is nearly 95-percent of light velocity. Computers calculate their earlier probable relativistic velocities to have been on the order of Warp 9.9! Well over a trillion kilometers-per-hour! Far faster than any known Federation craft or Starfleet starship, sir. Meaning, had such a seemingly improbable warp speed been sustained for a significantly long period..."

"This ship could've come from far outside our space," tensely contemplated Commander Brehk before Lt. Asher finished the statement. "Try to track a probable plot on that vessel, Lieutenant. Let's get some sort of idea as to what area of known space it might have more likely traveled from."

"Aye, Commander."

"Sir, I have tried all probable subspace frequency carriers and commonly-acquired channels," staidly said Ensign T'Sora, the lovely Vulcan currently in charge of Communications on the spacedock's Deck One. "No response thus far. Most logically, they simply must be ignoring our transmissions"

"Continue transmission, Ensign," responded a suddenly concerned Commander Brehk as his snake-eyes narrowed while watching the rapidly approaching alien ship via viewscreen. "Increase to Magnification Five."

"Aye, sir," someone said as, seconds later, the cryptic craft in question swiftly filled the large squarish screen. It was clearly quite a bit bigger than the current Constitution-class starships sent forth by Starfleet to explore and protect.

"Are you getting any internal readings, Mr. Asher? Any life-forms?"

No sooner asked by Brehk than Asher finished such via his station's sensors and computerized readouts. He swiftly swiveled his seat toward the centrally-standing representative of Dreadar Prime: an advanced-yet-lush planet orbiting a binary star system some 670 light-years from Earth.

"I'm not picking up life-form readings, Commander, but there is appreciable activity within its huge hull. If such was to be evincive of some sort of actual occupation of this vessel...which has something approaching thirty-two distinctly separate decks!...it would be between two and seven thousand."

"Thousand?" exclaimed Brehk with proper surprise over such an astounding number wherein their best starships maxed out at 430. Then, after returning to his by-the-book brand of command, his dual-toned, multi-octave voice gave an order for a Red Alert status not only on the spacedock, but suggested-via-constant connection with Starfleet HQ over which it orbited so consistently.

At last stepping closer to T'Sora seated so stiffly at her Communications station, Brehk readily ordered of the lovely-but-logical Vulcan, "Ensign T'Sora...send out a request for assistance from any starships nearest to Earth. Then pray to the seven thousand gods of my ancestors that they get here in time!"

As happenstance would have it, that starship turned out to be...

"Yes, Earth Spacedock, this is the U.S.S. ENTERPRISE..."

END OF CHAPTER 1


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

"Captain," Lt. Nyota Uhura tensely-yet-sedulously said, while swiveling away from her Communications station situated directly to the rear of Captain James T. Kirk's center seat on the lower of the two-tiered bridge. "An urgent General Alert transmission from Earth Spacedock."

Even as Captain Kirk perked up in a professional fashion for which he had become so pre-eminently lionized...

Commander Spock, Lt.-Commander Montgomery Scott, Lt. Hikaru Sulu, and Ensign Pavel Chekov all suddenly re-centered their own unique intentness upon the ebony beauty still swiveled toward their mutual commanding officer.

"What is it, Lieutenant?"

After removing, measuredly, her silvery ear receiver with well-manicured fingers, Lt. Uhura promptly replied, "There's an unknown warp-capable craft of immense size with up to seven thousand possible occupants within its hull. It has apparently ignored any and all attempts at contact. And it's currently on a continuous maximum-impulse path...for Earth."

"Thank you, Lt. Uhura," Kirk solicitously said as he swiftly swung his center seat forward while swiftly tossing orders about his bridge. "Mr. Chekov, plot a direct course for Earth. Mr. Sulu, maximum warp or better. Mr. Scott, push the warp engines to their utmost and maintain until we reach Earth-space."

"Yes, Keptin."

"Aye, Captain."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Kirk quickly left his center seat to step up onto the second tier in order to rapidly end up standing next to his First Officer and friend...

"Spock, what can you make of this? Any logical conjectures?"

Showing no sign of semblant emotionality, the half-Human/half-Vulcan lazily lifted a single slanted eyebrow and pricked up his pointy-tipped ears, while slowly-but-resolutely responding. "Without further information, which long-range sensors shall supply once we are within a half light-year of Earth-space, such speculation shall be subjective at best. However..."

Spock slowly swiveled his seat so as to fully face his friend, inwardly, and commander, outwardly, in order to offer his speculative statement.

"Logic would dictate that an unknown vessel speeding directly toward Earth with so many possible entities of perseity inside said ship..."

That purposeful pause signaled something particularly perilous, as Captain Kirk pressed, "Yes...?"

Spock now knitted that slanted brow beneath black Vulcan-cut hair, then said with ever-so-slight stress to his otherwise reticent tone. "Such definitely does not bode well for the aphoristic center of the United Federation of Planets and seat of Starfleet Command."

"Invasion, Spock?" quietly contemplated Captain Kirk for only Spock's pointy ears to hear.

With a self-certain, based solely upon a logic that has sustained an entire race for more centuries than any Human could conceive, Spock answered, also so only Kirk could hear. "Affirmative. Furthermore, the fact spacedock sensor scans detect internal movement involving thousands yet still no verifiable life-signs seems to suggest..."

Once again, Kirk quickly picks up on Spock's intractable train of thought and stated questioningly, "Androids?"

"Undoubtedly," Spock responded somewhat suggestively so as to allow his superior to draw his own conclusions as logically as could be expected of an emotionally-motivated Human.

"But," Kirk continued to conjecture, still in sotto voce for Spock's pointy-tipped ears alone, "the only place in existence within warp-traveled range, even at past-maximum warp speed, would be the K-type planet where Harcourt Fenton Mudd had discovered over two hundred thousand..."

As deduction led to dread, Captain Kirk's usually undaunted expression of peerless self-control quickly melted away prior to Starfleet training and starship experience shifted smoothly, or so Spock silently observed, back to an incomparable command mentality.

"I need the following officers to accompany me to the main briefing room," he ordered on his way to the turbolift doors, which would promptly open at Kirk's rapid approach. "Commander Spock, Lt.-Commander Scott, Ensign Chekov, Lt. Uhura, and Dr. McCoy."

Spock stood to smoothly stride toward the self-same turbolift, while allowing a subordinate bridge person to temporarily assume his station. Just as those others named had done with theirs after, for Uhura, making Deck One-to-Deck Five intracom contact with Dr. Leonard H. McCoy, while Lt. Sulu assumed interim command.

"Deck Six," Captain Kirk ordered aloud while simultaneously twisting the tactile interface handle after all called for from said bridge had dutifully stepped past the standing-open turbolift doors.

With a hiss sometimes easily discerned during particular tense times, such as this, those inside said turbolift car rapidly dropped from Deck One.

At some moment when not holding a briefing with five other officers in Briefing Room One, Captain James T. Kirk took the time to establish a vocalized transcription of the assumed situation...

"Captain's log, Stardate: 4519.9. The ENTERPRISE is currently streaking straight toward Earth at a dangerous-but-necessary relativistic velocity some 658 times the speed-of-light...Warp Factor 8.7! But even traveling within warped space in constant excess of approximately 710 billion kilometers-per-hour, we would still not enter Earth-space for some six or seven hours. Meaning we would arrive long after androids, undoubtedly led by Mr. Mudd, were somehow, persuaded...all 200,000 of them!...to swiftly construct a massive multi-deck Warp 9-Plus-capable craft to carry thousands, and himself, to Earth itself! A situation even Mr. Spock had said, during our briefing room meeting, did not bode well for Starfleet Command. Let alone the remaining multi-billion Humans and humanoids inhabiting my homeworld. Somehow, the ENTERPRISE and, most especially, myself and pre-selected persons, would, once more, find some means of prevailing over otherwise decidedly defectless androids! Lord knows...we can't lose this one."

END OF CHAPTER 2


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Having utilized a teleportation system similar to what was in use via starships, only larger so as to accommodate more numbers in a common beaming...

"Who are you?" courageously challenged the truly golden-haired Commander Brehk as two dozen androids now crowded spacedock's Deck One, brandishing makeshift phasers of their own singular design. "What do you want?"

"My name," came the merry reply, "is Harcourt Fenton Mudd. Formerly: Mudd the First. Now...and pretty much forever more...Mudd the Immortal. Hahahahaha!"

"That is not logical," succinctly stated Ensign T'Sora, with a slight lifting of a single slanted brow to outwardly express the closest thing to righteous irascibility that a passionless Vulcan could come. "Our most recent records, transmitted to Starfleet by the U.S.S. ENTERPRISE, duly denotes that Harcourt Fenton Mudd was...is...a mere Human. Save for the irrefutable fact that you have an uncanny knack for 'fooling' fellow Humans and similarly gullible humanoids. Last known to have been 'paroled', as it were, by Captain James T. Kirk to a race of androids on a K-type planet situated in Sector..."

"Do you happen to have a brother, dear lady?" impertinently interrupted Mudd the Immortal as his fleshy face, black handlebar mustache accentuated a humorous mix on a half-bald Human male ridiculously dressed in royal blues-and-purples. "Because you, my Vulcan lovely, sound exactly like a pointy-eared lad I've had the distinct displeasure of meeting more than once."

Before T'Sora, slanted brows knitted in cold analytical wonderment, came to comment in regards to her Vulcan lineage, a broadly grinning Mudd directed his next comically bemused statement to the resident representative of Dreadar Prime and current CO of Earth Spacedock...

"Now, uh, Commander, if you would be so kind as to surrender yourself and these others...not to mention making it easier to elicit the same from the remainder of spacedock...my androids and I shall see to it that your continued existence under my regal rule is as pleasant as possible."

Brehk's snake-eyes narrowed and his angelic appearance promptly formed a frown that seemed much more unnerving than that of a mere Human's facial features. His dual-toned, multi-octave voice delivering an underlying vindictiveness even worse than that of an ice-planet born-and-bred Andorian.

"You must be mad, Mudd, if you believe I would openly participate in anything that could place this spacedock or Earth and, by extension, Starfleet and the Federation, in such a decidedly dangerous..."

"'Dangerous'?" gregariously laughed Mudd as his teddy-bear eyes went wide. "Have I given you the impression we wish to harm you...or Earth...or Starfleet and the UFP? My dear Commander...I simply wished to sidestep the incontestable certitude that, by the end of the day...Mudd the Immortal shall most assuredly...be in total control. Hahahahahaha!"

"Captain's log, Stardate: 4521.4. Thanks to Mr. Scott's constant 'nurturing' down in engineering, plus a plot as perfect as what I would expect of Mr. Spock, himself, laid in by Ensign Chekov...and, undoubtedly, a hell of a lot of luck!...the ENTERPRISE has just reached the outer edge of Earth-space. Swiftly passing the outer planets, as well as Pluto, which had been erroneously regarded as a planet for centuries prior to proving to be a Kuiper Belt object. Proceeding now at near-maximum impulse speeds that would have us closing on Earth Spacedock in approximately fourteen minutes. I can only hope that we're not too late."

"Anything, Spock?" again asked Captain Kirk for the third time since dropping out of Warp 8.7 into space-normal Impulse.

Spock, being the emotionless half-Human/half-Vulcan Kirk had come to know so well, simply stood, once more time, to promptly peer down into his scanner hood. Blue illumination, within which was all the sensor data deemed necessary for a response, cast its soothing glow onto slanted-browed eyes. Spock's hand deftly adjusting the data-variant control on the side of said scanner hood to more readily clarify certain specifics.

"As has already been reported previously, upon our space-normal entry ever-deeper into Earth space," came the couched-in-calm logic comments from Commander Spock to the anxious-for-action, centrally-located Captain Kirk. "There is, indeed, an approximated-by-computers total of some seven thousand androids within the huge ship, presently sitting some sixteen hundred seventy-seven point eight-three-two kilometers from spacedock. I have also ascertained, again as nearly accurate as the computers can be under the present set of circumstances, that some two dozen androids have beamed over and are now in the midst of commandeering Deck One of spacedock. There also appears to be a probability of 99.9-percent that the androids will also soon start the process of securing the remaining Humans and humanoids on the remainder of decks via the use of self-simulated 'phasers'."

"And Mudd?" Captain Kirk asked tersely as he propped his right elbow on the right armrest of his center seat and concernedly stroked his heroic chin, lightly playing with his lower lip while looking over to the starboard station where stood Spock.

Seconds passed syrupy slow, as the passionless Science Officer/First Officer took further readings, then Spock stood stock straight and half-turned to tell his superior and secretly-held friend...

"No sign of Mr. Mudd, Captain. Neither on the vast vessel nor on spacedock. In fact, it would definitely denote that androids, alone, currently occupy both."

Casting a quick look at the bridge's rectangular viewscreen, thus far still showing planets passing by the still streaking in via Impulse-engaged ENTERPRISE, Kirk stood and stepped slowly to starboard. Staying on the lower of two tiers prior to pensively leaning against the red railing so perfectly separating the slightly lower level from upper.

"But that doesn't make sense. The androids were incapable of such self-devised 'deviousness'. When we left there...weeks earlier...they seemed motivated totally to continuing their original programming in regards to constructing habitable domes about the K-type planet."

"Indeed," Spock said as he neatly folded his hands behind a board-straight back, while logically-yet-annoyingly knitting his slanted brows. "And considering the propensity for pomposity associated with a Human of Mr. Mudd's nauseatingly obnoxious nature, it seems completely illogical that he would opt to remain on said K-type planet, while allowing only androids to discharge whatever worrisome stratagem he, himself, would have inevitably invented."

After Captain Kirk cast a smirking upward peek at the perfect, on the surface at least, mix of Human emotion 'neath avaricious Vulcan control...

"Mr. Spock, it appears you bear some personal 'grudge' against Harcourt Fenton Mudd."

Allowing his external expression to falter for the briefest of instants, Spock stiffened and not-so-stoically-as-usual said, "Such could not be further from the truth, Captain. I am merely, quite logically, 'unsettled' by the insulting deceptiveness used by Mr. Mudd to so handily dupe androids as perfectly logical as those on..."

"Why, Mr. Spock," cut in Kirk with a full-blown look of comicality to his handsome mien, "if I didn't know you better, I'd say you were jealous."

Leaving Spock speechless, something seemingly impossible!, Captain Kirk returned to his center seat even as Lt. Sulu proclaimed, "Passing Mars orbit, Captain. ETA to Earth: eighty-two seconds."

"Bring up shields and place weapons on line, Mr. Sulu. Ensign Chekov...take us in from the moon's dark side. No need in alerting the androids to our approach any sooner than necessary."

"Aye, Captain."

"Aye, Keptin."

"Let's just hope," Kirk commented mostly to himself, "that the androids haven't improved upon ship's weapons the way they did Warp Drive."

END OF CHAPTER 3


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Admiral Komack cursed silently to himself as he strode swiftly past his assistant, a lowly lieutenant that he hadn't yet taken the time to get to know...

Stepped through rapidly opening inner office door, which shut just as fast in his swift wake, as he stiffly took his seat at his desk...

And, more importantly at the moment, his standard Starfleet desktop computer.

After stabbing his forefinger forcefully onto its toggled activation switch...

"Computer," Admiral Komack commanded with an impious intonation matched by a similar facial affectation. "Transfer the transmission from spacedock control to this unit."

"Transferring," the computer promptly stated via its femininely lilting tonality.

There, as crystal clear as if seeing that infamously familiar face in the midst of his desk...preferably on a pointed stick!...came an unmistakably self-important mien.

"Admiral Komack, I presume," said, via unseen speakers, the ingratiatingly grinning career con man named Harcourt Fenton Mudd. "I've heard so much about you, but I never envisioned such a strong..."

"Cut the crap, Mudd!" exclaimed the white-haired Admiral, using a semi-swear word from a time some two centuries removed. "What the hell do you think you're doing up there? Whatever torrid little plans you may have percolating in that rotten brain of yours...!"

"Admiral Komack, I'm utterly stupefied that you would presume such of moi!" feigned the full-faced, half-bald, handlebar-mustachioed man-droid. "I am simply extending a courtesy call now that my android army and I have, at long last, deigned to drop in on the planet of my proud origin. And...to tell you that Mudd the Immortal has now laid claim to it all. Heh-heh-heehhh! You, my dear Admiral Komack...are now working...for me. Haa, hahahahaha!"

"Captain's log, Supplemental. The ENTERPRISE was now nearing the huge ship hovering so scarily close to Earth Spacedock. As described in earlier-received subspace transmissions...it was, indeed, an incredibly improved-upon, and massive in size, version of a starship. Soon the uncomfortable truth would, one way or the other!, become quite clear."

"Readings, Mr. Spock," commanded Captain James T. Kirk, even as he anxiously paced about the lower of two tiers of his bridge. His eyes, like everyone else's save, for the nonce, a certain half-Human/half-Vulcan Commander, currently looking down into his station's scanner hood, unswervingly centered upon the viewscreen.

"The occupation of both ship and spacedock is most assuredly android in nature," passionlessly reported Spock as the blue-illuminated delivered data contained much more than prior readings. "And it is a certainty that Mr. Mudd, the Human, is not amongst that number. Which quite commonsensically means..."

"That our 'friend' Mudd," cut in Kirk, even as Spock straightened and half-turned toward the standing-on-lower-tier starship commander, "is an android."

"You mean," Lt. Sulu said as he half-swiveled away from his helm with an expression of sheer confusion upon his distinctively Oriental countenance, "Harcourt Fenton Mudd...made an android in his image to take his place on this...'invasion'?"

Before Captain Kirk could offer a response in regards to Lt. Sulu's logical query, considering the Helmsman was left in interim command during that particular Stardate and, thus, not party to what went on within the habitable doom dominating the lifeless surface of that Class-K rock of a world...

"No, Hikaru," Lt. Nyota Uhura answered in Kirk's stead, fueled from a much more personal recollection. "It means that Mr. Mudd has had the androids create a perfect robotic replica of himself...then transferred his singular consciousness into it. Making him, for all practical purposes...immortal."

As Uhura's atramentous affectation reflected the fact that she still, to some degree, longed for what had been described by one of the Alice androids weeks earlier in regards to being both beautiful and youthful...for 500,000 years.

As she swiftly shifted such thoughts back to her ENTERPRISE-oriented station duties...

"Spock, Uhura, Chekov, Scotty," determinedly ordered Kirk while hurriedly heading for the turbolift doors, "with me. Uhura, have McCoy meet us in the main transporter room. Sulu, you have the conn."

"Aye, aye, Captain," came the combined dual-voiced response from two Lieutenants.

Mere minutes following those forcefully delivered directives, six distinct shapes materialized, amidst a memorably familiar whine, within the heart of spacedock's Deck One.

As phaser pistols were swiftly snatched from hips and held by all six starship persons, none were very surprised to be suddenly surrounded by androids brandishing their improved-upon "phasers". Forcing the six to, thus, surrender their own.

Then...

"Captain, dear, Captain," Mudd the Immortal smilingly said as he stepped through the throng of obstinately obedient android devotees. "How nice of you to 'pop in', as it were. As you can see...you were hardly unexpected."

"Mudd...," started Kirk angrily.

"That's," quickly corrected the Human-cum-mechanization in blue-purple apparel, "Mudd the Immortal, laddie buck. Soon to be the sole sovereign ruler of everything you, my doe-eyed dilettante, have come to hold so dear. Including...should I wish it...your starship."

Attempting to volte-face this singularly intense situation, Kirk asked, "How did you do it, Harry? How did you reacquire control of 200,000 androids? How did you con them into transferring your so-called 'soul' into an android body? One that, for some strange reason, you opted to be the same fat form you already were. For that matter, Harry...how the hell did you survive the Stellas?"

Even as the recent recollection of 500 android replicas of the nagging wife Mudd had long since left far behind sent shivers, so to speak, down a duranium spine...

"Yes, well, as spinning stories still intrigues my all-too-Human mind, even in this all-too-artificial frame," prefaced the full-faced Mudd the Immortal as a tale or two taunted his tongue. "Starting with the, uh, Stellas you so nastily left to, er, 'attend' me...

"I simply used the self-same means you and the others so successfully instigated 'gainst Norman...who, by the way, was no longer the sole centralized 'processor', so to speak, after the androids had rededicated such to themselves. At any rate, it was a somewhat simple matter to overload my Stellas...unfortunately, I had to do it with each and every one of the 500. A most...tiring enterprise.

"Then, I simply worked to convince my mechanical captors that the construction of a Mudd model android, with the subsequent transference of my austere Self into said android...would, undoubtedly, rid me of my, er, terribly antisocial tendencies. After which...well, let's just say placing all of those trusting soulless wretches under my masterly directives once more was simpler than even I had envisioned.

"And what's wrong with my, uhm, pleasantly plump personage? I believe my body...even my, er uhm, slightly balding head...as it were...exhibit a properly imperial look. And, don't forget, Kirk...I am...Mudd the Immortal. Hahahahahaha!"

"After such a tediously tautological dissertation, Mr. Mudd," started a stiffly standing Spock, only to be crudely interrupted by...

"Mudd the Immortal!"

"Mudd the Immortal," calamitously corrected the Vulcan with a lifting of a single slanted brow and the wriggling, slightly!, of pointy-tipped ears. "At any rate, it would seem a precipitous surprise that such an ongoing oration had not inordinately rendered the re-circulated rate of oxygen reciprocity customarily associated with the proper perpetuation of life-prolongation in regards to the non-android individuals presently residing inside said spacedock's Deck One dangerously diffused."

As Mudd the Immortal's artificially animated mien formed a mask of comical confusion, a smirking Dr. Leonard H. McCoy extended a simplistic translation...

"In Human that means your long-winded explanation's using up all the air in here."

"You know, Mr. Spock," proffered a puffed-up Mudd the Immortal in a barely-obscured insult, "if my androids had deigned to design a body duplication for you...there'd be no need to transfer your all-logic consciousness. Since no one would be able to tell the difference."

Even as such caused smiles of amusement to momentarily dominate not only Dr. McCoy's country-fied features, but those of Lt. Uhura, Lt.-Commander Scott, and Ensign Chekov...

Captain Kirk, quite contradictorily, couldn't help but be gravely overwrought with worry in regards to some means of defeating androids that no longer relied upon total logic to sustain the subsistence of the entire group.

Not to mention coming up with a means of defeating an android Harcourt Fenton Mudd. A man of implacable self-certainty now suffused with physical "super-strength".

As for Spock: at the moment, his Human-half was feeling emphatically...offended.

END OF CHAPTER 4


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

"Careful now," Lt. DeSalle said slightly louder than the merest whisper to the equally armed-with-phaser pistols Security persons who'd secretly accompanied the assistant-to-Scotty during a dual beam-over at the self-same time as Kirk and company. Except these six, one in tan tunic and the rest in red, were a couple of decks down where no androids had as yet been detected. "The last thing we want is for those robotic bastards to stop us before completing the Captain's plan."

As swiftly as possible, the six stealthily snaked their way through that lower deck in order to reach a turbolift which would whisk them in near-noiselessness up so as to put Part Two of the plan into prompt implementation.

Meanwhile, up on Deck One of spacedock...

"James, James," the pot-bellied robo-Mudd, so to speak, continued to taunt the Captain. "There's simply no way to word it to make your limited imagination to entirely envision the Grand Dream of Mudd the Immortal. Isn't it enough to know that my immortal magnificence...er, along with these other androids, I suppose...shall usher in a New Order that would take not only the United Federation of Planets...soon to be renamed Mudd's Worlds...but Starfleet Command...uhm, maybe Mudd's Command or, er, something like that...to a grandeur heretofore unfounded by..."

"And I always believed Spock was a windbag," Dr. McCoy scoffed, causing Spock to cast a secretively incensed sideways stare as slanted brows knitted annoyingly. Clearly the half-Vulcan/half-Human mentally believed such an insulting statement was ill-considered and ill-placed.

"Harry," started the singular starship commander, before an affectation of admonishment from the the man-droid caused Captain Kirk to restate his stuttered salutation. "'Mudd the Immortal'...it would take the entire 200,000 androids...in tens of thousands of starship-type vessels similar to the one you and these 'disciples' of yours used to get this far, before forcing surrender from Starfleet and the Federation."

"Already under way, Jimmy boy," Mudd the Immortal snickered sinisterly. "As we speak...or, rather, as you listen...my overtly-obedient androids are tirelessly constructing as many maximum-plus warp-capable craft as necessary to 'assist' in the transition from Federation rule...to mine. Heheheh!"

"You bloated bugger," growled an angry Lt.-Commander Scott as he decided to speak up for the first time since these six solidified on Deck One. His almost musical Scottish accent lessening the intended tone meant to match the mad-as-hell mien. "Do ya really believe Starfleet'll let you and yer soulless lot take o'er without a proper scrap?"

"Da!" added an also-angry Ensign Chekov's choppy Russian-accented words with the self-same emotionality as Mr. Scott. "There are Russians down there who vould never surrender to such as you!"

At almost the same moment, in an overlapping vocalization, Lt. Uhura remarked, much less insistently than Scotty or Chekov, "Just how are you going to get billions of people on one planet...let alone the countless trillions of the Federation!...to blindly follow you?"

"Speaking solely in respect to Humans and other equally emotional humanoids," Spock staidly said a split-second after the ebon beauty, "the likelihood that the implementation, or attempt thereof, regarding your 'rule' would be so facilely accepted seems on the order of hundreds-of-thousands-to-one against. Therefore, the futility for which you and these other androids are so fallaciously toiling..."

"Mr. Spock, by the time Vulcans like you," aggravatingly groaned Mudd the Immortal with a weary roll of his black-browed eyes, "finish a single solitary sentence, my androids and I would've already defeated the Federation. Though I'm sorely considering dropping Vulcan from my list. Especially seeing that my new android body has no need for sleep."

While a smile, once more, played upon Dr. McCoy's lips, his amusement over Spock's secretly incensed inner Self bespoke of those nasty little emotions so assiduously suppressed somewhere deep down in a half-Human/half-Vulcan soul...

And before further argument from Kirk or Scott or Uhura or Chekov could slip so ostentatiously out...

"Hold it!"

No sooner had DeSalle and the Security specialists, Phaser Twos held steady, stepped out of the turbolift after arriving at spacedock's Deck One...

Than Captain Kirk and company, clearly in a previously devised and agreed-upon plan-within-a-plan, pulled palm-sized Phaser Ones from an oppositely positioned point at their hips. Basically surrounding said androids and, more importantly, Mudd the Immortal.

"Okay, Harry," said Kirk while insultingly placing pointed emphasis upon the fact this pseudo-leader never deserved his self-styled title. "Game's up. If you and your 'following' drop their weapons and surrender, I'll see to it that a tribunal of Starfleet and Federation persons come to consider..."

Before finishing or, for that matter, discharging stunning blasts from some dozen Starfleet-issue phasers, both pistols and smaller...

An all-too-familiar pre-teleportation whine was heard mere seconds before a gregariously grinning, like the aphoristic Cheshire Cat!, Mudd the Immortal, and his accompanying androids, faded from material reality.

"What the devil...?" started the suddenly cynical again Dr. McCoy even as everyone readily realized what had happened.

"Apparently," Spock succinctly stated with a slight sigh as he lowered his palm-sized phaser and lifted a single slanted brow, "Mr. Mudd had hatched a counter to our duplicitous stratagem."

"In other words, Spock," McCoy commented in near-comical exacerbation, "we've been hoodwinked."

Considering such a statement so readily related to Human maxims, Spock stiffened slightly and folded hands, no longer clutching the palm-sized phaser as such was at his hip again, while inclining his Vulcan head and answering simply. "Yes."

As for Captain Kirk, scant seconds of the surprise beam-out by Mudd the Immortal and attending androids, he had flipped open his communicator with its routine chirp...

"Kirk to ENTERPRISE. Mudd's dematerialized from spacedock. Do sensors show whether he's gone back to their craft or...?"

Sulu's response was swift and decried the craftiness developed over time by the Helmsman...

"Scanners pinpoint them materializing in the middle of Starfleet Headquarters, Captain. Worse, their 'starship' is swiftly shifting its position a little closer to Earth while charging their compliment of more powerful weapons! Should we beam back both teams?"

"Negative, Mr. Sulu," Captain Kirk tersely instructed as his hand tightened a little harder around his gold-and-black communicator. "Assume defensive stance. Shields up. Phaser banks and photon torpedoes ready for firing. Try to warn away the android craft, but should they choose to disregard..."

"Understood, Captain," Lt. Sulu instantly answered, as Kirk slap-closed said communicator, promply returning it to its posterior-placed position, whilst looking to the C.O. of Earth Spacedock.

"Commander Brehk," Captain Kirk sternly-yet-earnestly requested, "we need your help."

END OF CHAPTER 5


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6/Conclusion

As Security personnel, pledged to the logistical center of Starfleet, especially considering a hostile ship hovered over Earth proper, lay in unconscious clumps all along the android's walking wake...

And as said androids, Mudd the Immortal in the lead, but flanked closely by the male members of the made-to-order robotic team, entered through the outer office doors of...

"Laddie buck, we're here to see Admiral Komack," forewarned Mudd the Immortal to the lowly Lieutenant shakily standing his ground with a Phaser Two in an equally quivering right hand. "I strongly suggest you step aside."

"I c-can't d-do that," nervously advocated the young officer, whose surname, by the by, was Vasillios, Lieutenant, Third Class. "P-please...t-turn around...and l-leave this office. I d-don't want to sh-shoot."

With a wink and a nod, too slight to be seen by Lt. Vasillios, Mudd the Immortal made certain two of his Alice-series androids moved to distract the duty-bound "desk jockey", whilst Mudd did what he did best...

"Lieutenant, surely we can come to some sort of understanding. Seeing that my Destiny, as it were, has been preordained...er, by me...yes...to take total control of Starfleet and, by extension, Earth, there's most certainly a position for you with Mudd the Immortal. Think of it, my boy! Not only would lovely ladies such as these be at your beck and call...but I could see to it that you were immortalized in metal...with a flesh-like covering, of course. Hm? What do you say, lad?"

For a seemingly single second, most likely a lot longer!, Lt. Vasillios actually considered the "kind offer" laid out so believably by Mudd the Immortal. But as his peripheral vision spied the steady approach of an Alice from either side, thus splitting his already erratic attention in twain...

"Erk!"

It would be Mudd, himself, who, thanks to his mechanized muscle and cybernetic speed, swiftly closed on Mr. Vasillios, relieving the Lieutenant of his phaser, and literally lifted him by the scruff of his scrawny neck some sixteen centimeters straight up.

"Now, then, my boy," Mudd the Immortal said with a sinister sneer as he stared straight up into the dangling Lieutenant's blue-green eyes. "Do you voluntarily stand aside...or do I do what must be done?"

Before the frightened and flailing, hopelessly, Lt. Vasillios made a decision one way or the other...

"Put him down, Mudd!"

Doing so, but because it was the conscious desire of Mudd the Immortal and not at all because a barely-familiar voice said so, the big-bellied bringer of chaos to the command center of Starfleet faced down...

"Admiral Komack," smilingly said the mustachioed man-droid, but not at all in a duteous tone. "You look much younger in person than on my ship's viewscreen. Ever thought about adding a touch of color to your hair? Maybe a basic brown or..."

"What the hell do you think you can accomplish by all this, Mr. Mudd?" the Admiral asked not at all sheepishly nor cowed by the androids in the anteroom to his inner office suite.

"That's Mudd the...!"

"No, Harry, it's not!"

Having heard such said with a singular disregard for danger from their rear, Mudd the Immortal and his android disciples spun to see...

"Kirk, old boy!" smilingly said the robotic reboot of a certain scoundrel of several star systems. "And here I thought you'd taken my rapid departure from spacedock personally. What? No phaser? Tsk-tsk-tsk! How disappointing."

"That's because I've brought something a lot more likely to stop you in your tracks, Harry," Captain Kirk quipped with the self-certitude so associated with this celebrated starship commander. Then, with a hint of humorous mocking of the man-droid. "Er, as it were..."

Before the furrowed-brow Mudd the Immortal could counter with some insulting absurdity so consistently associated with the Human still alive within the extremely intricate positronic brain containing all that made Mudd Mudd...

"Harcourt!" came a screeching call that could only belong to...

"S-Stella?"

"Harcourt Fenton Mudd," shrieked the red-haired harpy of a woman as she pushed past not only Kirk, but the androids who'd come to consider her something of a deity due to two past facts: first, the Human Mudd had had them construct a replica of her for his strange-to-automatons uses, involving lots of very vocal conversation; and, lastly, because their first defeat, at the heroic hands of Captain James T. Kirk and five other officers from the U.S.S. ENTERPRISE, ended with them creating 500 copies of the frizzy-headed crone.

"Harcourt, what have you been up to?" she sneered as she stepped to within a half-meter of her errant deserter of a spouse. "Just when I was getting used to not having to haul you in from any one of dozens of pubs here on Earth and accepted, happily, the irrefutable fact that you were long lost somewhere in space, I have to be told that you're back and you're trying to take over the planet!"

"Sh-shut up, Stella," stammered Mudd the Immortal as a fear far greater than any presented by death sentence-carrying crimes, committed on more Federation worlds than he could quickly count, dominated his unamused mind.

"Shut up?" squawked Stellar, whilst shaking a single forefinger in the fat face of someone from whom she'd been seeking some measure of revenge for a very, very long time. "How dare you talk to me like that, Harcourt! After all the hell you've put me through...not to mention making money and never once sending even a tiny bit back to your abandoned wife! I ought to gouge out your eyes for what you've done, not only to me, but to...!"

As Stella's tirade continued uninterrupted, a woeful former Mudd the Immortal, who, now, was simply an impossibly long-living artificial receptacle of the harangued husband he'd been and would be for decades to come...

"Kirk, please! You can't...you shouldn't have...this is...cruel and inhuman punishment! I thought the Federation frowned on such a thing!"

"They do, Harry," replied a nearly laughing Captain Kirk, fists heroically propped on his hips. "But you're no longer truly 'Human', are you?"

Turning now to the thus-far-obedient androids, especially the males represented by such as the Arthur-series, the Oscar-series, the Herman-series, etc., a desperate-beyond-belief Mudd pleaded, "Well, don't just stand there, like the lifeless intellects you are! D-destroy her!"

As such a stuttered request conflicted with the basal cybernetic programming of the androids gathered together in the outer office of Admiral Komack, not to mention other reasons supposedly known only to the former Mudd the Immortal, Ruler of Worlds...

"...and what about the time you sneaked back, like a thief in the night, to steal credits from my home, the home you left a long time before," Stella still continued without a hint of hesitation or pause.

As Mudd wondered worriedly, "Wh-what's happened? Wh-why have they deactivated themselves? Kirk?"

But it would be Commander Spock who stepped in, as the rest of Kirk's away team waited just outside said outer office, and, with a lazily lifted single slanted brow, explained the situation...

"We surmised, Mr. Mudd, that since severing the linked-to-Norman mega-mind prior to being robotized yourself and desirously returning to Earth with a huge aggregation of androids..."

"Spock, just spit it out already!" came Dr. Leonard H. McCoy's tired-and-ready-to-beam-back-up retort that had Mr. Spock stiffening while stifling that half-Human emotionality buried so deeply beneath via his half-Vulcan decrees.

Folding hands behind board-straight back once again, Spock cut his explicative speech to a pithier report...

"We came to comprehend that you, Mr. Mudd, could never allow the androids to truly act upon their own individual volition, therefore..."

"We knew," swiftly said Captain Kirk, with unspoken apologies to his First Officer and friend, "that you being you...well, you made yourself the 'centralized controller' of them all. Once we shut you down, so to speak...with the assistance of Stella..."

"All right, all right!" Mudd said in surrender. "Do what you want to me, but just get me away from my wife!"

"Why you ungrateful, alcoholic, womanizing, wanted-in-ten-systems, charlatan!" Stella continued to screech, as a cackling Kirk playfully elbowed his second-in-command.

Causing Spock to lift both devilishly slanted brows, wriggle his pointy-tipped ears ever-so-slightly, and heave a very, very heavy sigh of passionless exasperation. Hmf...Humans!

Some time later, streaking through space via Warp Four relativistic velocities...

"Well, Jim," McCoy merrily queried of the Captain while on one side of the center seat as a stiffly standing Spock took his proper place on the other. "Think Starfleet Headquarters' reinforced brigs can really hold 'Mudd the Immortal'? I mean, his android body does still possess some of that 'super-strength' he exhibited."

"I'm sure...," began a grinning Kirk, just as Mr. Spock answered in his stead.

"The maximum security brigs currently employed by the command central of Starfleet are of a design that should keep even an android 'con man' confined, and the force field is doubly..."

"I was talking to the Captain," snorted, both teasing-yet-incensed, Dr. McCoy, causing Commander Spock to sigh in heavy exasperation again, as the Captain put an end to a potential argument, no matter how amusing it might be, between two top officers and dear friends.

"Gentlemen, I think that Mr. Mudd will have to outlive his current predicament, which, being android, he eventually will. As to the other androids, once Spock explained to them the situation's patented lack of logic..."

"In other words," McCoy murmured more than loud enough to be readily heard, "one 'machine' told a lot of other machines to head back home and dismantle whatever 'fleet' they might've already constructed. Might as well have had the ship's computer talk to 'em."

"Doctor," staidly said the ship's Science Officer/First Officer while aloofly looking over at the ship's Chief Medical Officer, "I can assure you that even the ENTERPRISE's peerless computer system could scarcely..."

"Mr. Sulu," naughtily called out Captain Kirk, even as the two top officers in blue tunics literally entered into overlapping point-counterpoint speeches, "like it or not, Lieutenant...you have the conn!"

Swiftly rising and bounding up short steps to pass through rapidly-opening turbolift doors, even as Spock and McCoy continued their mutual ranting on the lower of two tiers, and anxiously twisted the tactile interface handle while pleadingly ordering, "Captain's cabin...and hurry!"

END


End file.
